Attachment and Autism Spectrum Disorder (Without Intellectual Disability) During Middle Childhood: In Search of the Missing Piece

In this opinion article, the authors recommend to complement the limited body of research on attachment and ASD during middle childhood by including the assessment of implicit representations, their predictors, correlates and outcomes. Future research on children with ASD in middle childhood should consider a more global assessment of attachment combining and comparing different sources of information (e.g., parent-reported, self-reported, observer-rated). This challenge represents an intriguing opportunity to renew the scientific debate on attachment and ASD, which cannot be regarded as comprehensive, bearing in mind the lack of data and the multiple unanswered questions on implicit representations.